Public opinion contains all kinds of falsity and truth, but it takes a great man to find the truth in it. The great man of the age is the one who can… - Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

Every kind of falsehood and truth is present in public opinion, but it is the prerogative of the great man to discover the truth within it. He who expresses the will of his age, tells it what its will is, and accomplishes this will, is the great man of the age.

The one who merely flees is not yet free. In fleeing he is still conditioned by that from which he flees.

But if a good heart, a good intention, a subjective conviction are declared to be the sources from which actions derive their worth, then there is no longer any hypocrisy or evil at all; for whatever someone does, he can always turn it into something good through reflecting on his good intentions and motives, and so the moment of his convictions renders it good.

When, therefore, a man is told, “You (your inner being) are so and so, because your skull-bone is so constituted,” this means nothing else than that we regard a bone as the man's reality. To retort upon such a statement with a box on the ear — in the way mentioned above when dealing with psysiognomy — removes primarily the “soft” parts of his head from their apparent dignity and position, and proves merely that these are no true inherent nature, are not the reality of mind; the retort here would, properly speaking, have to go the length of breaking the skull of the person who makes a statement like that, in order to demonstrate to him in a manner as palpable as his own wisdom that a bone is nothing of an inherent nature at all for a man, still less his true reality.